Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening]

CURATOR: LAURIE K. BERTRAM

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Who do we remember in the

history of Canada and why?

The old saying that “history

is written by the victors” reminds us that

power shapes the way we see the past. The

saints of Western Canadian popular history,

European ‘pioneers,’ are still depicted as

Canada’s founders and unceasing cause.

They receive almost endless tributes

in parks, street names, school projects,

heritage villages, and museum exhibits. Yet

such depictions obscure the complexity of

settler populations in Canada, including

their close (and ongoing) ties to colonialism,

crime, and violence. As Lesley Erickson

reminds us, beyond livestock theft, White

settlers accounted for more than eighty

per cent of all recorded crimes committed

in what was known as the Northwest

Territories (now Western Canada) between

1878 and 1885.1

Through monuments we continuously

encounter certain versions of history in

everyday life. Their mission is to transmit

historical values into the present by

encouraging us to form emotional ties

to the faces they portray — brave White

pioneers, dead soldiers, frumpy prime

ministers, fearless ‘explorers.’ Monuments

make hierarchies of human value. By their

very nature they also tell us whose histories

we should forget and which people have no

historical or emotional value in the national

story. In Winnipeg, still erect beside the

Manitoba Museum, stands the “Volunteer

Tower” that commemorates the White

soldiers who died fighting Métis and First

Nations forces under Louis Riel in 1885. On

the perimeter of the Downtown Eastside in

Vancouver — “ground zero for missing and

murdered women” in Canada — one of the

largest, well-maintained monuments to the

loss of human life is devoted to World War I

soldiers. Far from simply remembering the

past, monuments create histories and shape

the way we see the present. They attempt

to establish hierarchies of meaningful life

where the valuing of certain categories

of people over others appears natural,

inevitable, even traditional. As scholars

of genocide, memory, and colonialism

have well illustrated, dehumanization and

dehistoricization (the writing of people out

of the history books) go hand in hand.

Using historical research and rare

photographs from the Winnipeg Police

Museum, Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening]

explores the challenges that criminalized

women pose to our understanding of

history and heroism in the Canadian West.

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are other ‘traditions’ and chapters in the

history of women in the Canadian West.

Here, criminalization was not a permanent

feature. Here, police officers continually

defended the tradition of safer red-light

districts. Here, the “red blooded men” of

Western Canada were renowned throughout

the continent for their “tenderness and

courtesy” towards sex-trade workers. Here,

ambitious but impoverished women forged

their own way in life despite discriminatory

legislation that attempted to restrict their

movement and livelihoods. In this exhibition

and in new histories of the West, women on

the margins are honoured for their ambition

and resistance to racist and sexist systems

of inequality.

In Canada’s newer heritage landscapes,

the unveiling of several “Famous Five”

sculptures celebrate the White middle-class

advocates who led the charge for women’s

legal equality in Canada while illuminating

the radically fluctuating definitions of

human worth in the very recent past. This

exhibit explores the challenges set forth by

the histories of an (in)famous five. Using

sentimental objects, and historical clothing,

furniture, and music, Pioneer Ladies [of

the Evening] highlights the complex lives

of each woman. Here, fashion and posing

The fixation with noble settler-pioneers in

Canadian heritage campaigns contributes

to the amnesia surrounding violence against

women on the margins over the past

century. Thousands of women have gone

missing or been murdered in Canada since

1912, with high concentrations of violence

against impoverished and Aboriginal

women. In Canada, as activists have well

illustrated, the deaths and disappearances of

these women have long been dismissed and

normalized through profiling by officials and

perpetrators alike, using ideas about race,

gender, ‘at-risk’ lifestyles, family ‘troubles,’

tragic ‘romance’ or criminal involvement.

Also absent has been an understanding

of the historical gravity of this ongoing

period in Canadian history, in which the

conditions for mass violence against

certain populations endure and thrive, often

without punishment or intervention.

Resituating these arresting images of

our regional ancestors at the centre of our

historical attention, this exhibit debunks

popular portrayals of the ‘inevitability’ or

naturalness of the victimization of women on

the margins, all the while using the pioneer

figure or trope. Here, alongside biographies

of lady pornographers, brothel business

leaders, and broomstick-wielding vigilantes, 33

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limestone, and bronze. More than simple

shots of captivity, these images are about

the possibilities we inherit when we honour

the complex but remarkable lives and

histories of marginalized women.

NOTE1 Erickson, Lesley. Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law,

and the Making of a Settler Society. Vancouver: UBC Press,

2011, 45.

for portraits function as an archive of

identity, ambition, and sometimes defiant

confrontation with the police cameras

that tried to ‘capture’ women’s images. By

recasting these mugshots into a valued

three-dimensional heritage landscape,

this exhibit joins historical scholarship that

promotes a new critical tradition in which

women on the margins receive the same

legal, social, and cultural consideration as

historical elites memorialized in marble,

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LAURIE K. BERTRAM, PIONEER LADIES [OF THE EVENING]

04 May–09 June 2012

1. Edna Floyd, Madam, Owen Sound (born 1882)

2. Katla Gudmundsdottir, Maid/Vigilante, Winnipeg (born 1860)

3. Pearl Andrews, Winnipeg Lady (born circa 1874)

4. Lil’ Ava, Bank Robber Accomplice/Fashion Plate, Vancouver (born circa 1892)

5. Sarah Fields, Lady Pornographer, Regina/Winnipeg (born 1893)

6. The Sentimental Corner, found and scavenged materials (2012)

7. Mugshots, circa 1904–1916, courtesy of The Winnipeg Police Museum